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July 2012

Monday, July 16, 2012

The DVD of the movie “Runaway Jury,” starring John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman, contains an interview with Dustin Hoffman in its “Special Features” section. Hoffman speaks about the privilege of working with Hackman, particularly within the context of one scene in which their two characters have an intense angry encounter. After that scene was shot, he and Gene went out together for a drink, and while they talked they admitted to each other the same thing: whenever they finish a movie they are sure they will never again be able to accomplish another, nor even be asked; that what they've done was a fluke (my paraphrase). Listening to the interview, I was stunned but encouraged. Here were two movie giants who I imagined cruised from success to success without any personal fears or doubts. If the greats can feel this way, there’s hope for the rest of us.

I’m playing around with a new writing project. Not sure whether my idea will turn into anything but the blank pages are in front of me. In light of Hoffman and Hackman's admission, it's not so terrible to have self doubt when looking at a blank page or a pile of random thoughts that need shaping or to wonder if a finished piece is the last before I'll fizzle or am discovered as an imposter. It's just the way it is. In these creative enterprises there are no rules that you can follow, 1 to 10, and be assured of an outcome, and so it may always feel like beginning for the first time.

Friday, July 13, 2012

I just finished reading a beautiful meditation on mollusks. Gastropods in particular. The snail to be exact. An ordinary garden snail sustained the spirit of Elizabeth Tova Bailey for one year among many of a mysterious illness, and she wrote about it in her lovely book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. Her friend had lifted the snail from the floor of the woods near her home, laid it under a wild violet uplifted from that same woods and planted in a pot, and gave it to her as a bedside gift.

By day, Bailey felt comaraderie with the nocturnal snail who also lay motionless while the sun shone and the rest of the world hurried about. By night, sleep was difficult and she felt comfort in listening to the sound of the snail chewing wilted leaves and mushrooms with its 80 rows of 2,640 teeth and in knowing he was roaming about while the rest of the world slept.

Of course the book is not only a meditation on snails, but also on the mysterious bond between humans and pets, and on illness and survival.

"Everything about a snail is cryptic, and it was precisely this air of mystery that first captured my interest. My own life, I realized, was becoming just as cryptic. From the severe onset of my illness and through its innumerable relapses, my place in the world has been documented more by my absence than by my presence....Yet it wasn’t that I had truly vanished; I was simply homebound, like a snail pulled into its shell. But being homebound in the human world is a sort of vanishing."

The book’s 208 pages, which includes penciled drawings of snails, gives me new respect for the complex anatomy and physiology of, and surprising historical literary attention to, the common snail. In fact, it made me feel guilty for so intensely disliking the slimy slugs, gastropodal cousin to the snail, that invaded a garden I once had and on which I blamed the garden’s lack of growth. Every night I put out jar lids full of beer to entice them away from my plants, but these efforts of eviction did no good. Still, I remind myself, those slugs didn’t carry the snail's graceful shell with the Fibonacci spiral that speaks of elegance and mystery.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

If you've been to the Glen Workshop sometime in the last ten years or so you probably know or have met Father David Denny. A former Carmelite monk. Kind, gentle, and wise. I first met him at the Glen but then got to know him when he was a "chaplain" for a few of the residencies in the graduate program I was in. He and Tessa Bielecki founded and now operate "The Desert Foundation," a nonprofit organization that focuses on exploring desert spirituality and building peace between the three Abrahamic traditions that grew out of the desert.

The verse on their newsletter that arrived last week, and also on their website, is from Isaiah 35:

"The desert and the dry land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom."

I'm mentioning it simply to spread the word to any reader here that might have a similar interest to that of Denny or Bielecki. They are always looking for participants or partners, friends of any sort. Their website offers book reviews and reflections, back copies of their newsletter ("Caravans"), and a schedule of classes and retreats.

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

The Grand Opening of ASI's new wing last weekend was concurrent with the opening of a new exhibit, the first exhibit in ASI's new gallery, although the exhibit overflowed the gallery to fill much of the Institute's wallspace in both the new and old wings.

Most are commissioned landscape designs. Her first commission came at the age 29 years from the Weyerhauser Corporation: "Rainforest," 9 feet by 14 feet. A team of textile artists have learned her techniques and also have pieces on display with the theme "Nordic Forest" as part of this exhibit.

These tapestries, all of them, not just the ones by the master Hernmarck were so beautiful that people were standing in front of them literally wide-eyed and with mouths gaping open. Then there was laughter, smiles. The beauty produced joy in room after room.

I want to go back and look at each more closely, not because I'm a weaver and will try to imitate the technique (although weaving is one of the many things I dream of trying someday), but because it does my heart and mind good to stand in the presence of beauty. And also, importantly, looking at this kind of art, pieces in which you can see every thread placement, which is similar to the kind of painting where you can see every brush stroke, teaches me something I can't articulate about choosing and laying down one word and then another and another to create something bigger than the sum of its parts.

Monday, July 02, 2012

The American Swedish Institute, located here in Minneapolis, held a Grand Opening of its new wing this past weekend. In this Scandinavian-dense city, the ASI has acted for many years as a cultural center for all things Swedish, hosting museum exhibits, dinners, classes, festivals, a gift shop, and so on, in its "Castle" on Park Avenue, which was originally built in 1903 as the mansion of Swedish-American newspaper publisher.

The new wing is new in every way. "Green," sleek, light to the Castle's dark. My husband and I stopped in for the opening just as a group of students from a local grade school were performing a Native American Indian dance in its performance hall, which is an indicator of what else is new. The ASI's vision is expanding to include multicultural programming in recognition of the multicultural reality that is now this metropolitan area, particularly the neighborhood in which the ASI stands

My husband and I found this interesting: By looking at the original Castle from the vantage point of the new wing, you can see and appreciate it from a perspective you never could before when this land was a parking lot. Similarly, the best way to get a full view of the new wing is to stand facing it from a window on the upper floor of the Castle.

Looking back; looking forward.

Before we left, we drank coffee and split a cardamom roll, sitting in a shady corner on the courtyard, in the space between the old and the new.

“Far from my high school daydreams about the future, I am on a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread, for living rather than dying. I want to cast my net on the side of astonishment.... I want to find God at work in me and through me. I want livelihood.

Livelihood: the word gathers up and bundles together the simultaneous longings for meaning, satisfaction, and provision. In the fullest sense of the word, livelihood means the way of one’s life; it means the sustenance to make that way possible; it means both body and soul are fully alive thanks to what has been earned or received by grace. On one level we make our livelihood; on another level we keep our eyes open and find it.”

–Nancy J. Nordenson, Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure (Kalos Press)

By day I'm a medical writer. After hours I do another kind of work. Creative writing, spiritual writing, essaying. This blog arises from those after hours. I write about work/vocation, meaning, hope, imagination, faith, science, creativity/writing, books, and anything else I feel the impulse to write about. I hope these short posts provide camaraderie for your own creative and spiritual life.